Even a casual Marx Brothers fan knows that the siblings made their best films for their first Hollywood studio, Paramount Pictures.

Already vaudeville veterans pushing past 40, they made their satiric masterpiece, “Duck Soup”(1933) and the wacky stage adaptations “The Cocoanuts” and “Animal Crackers,” their popularity building until peaking with “Horse Feathers” (1932), which was a smash and landed them on the cover of Time Magazine, all for Paramount.

The act, settling into Groucho, Chico and Harpo, gave up all that, and Paramount’s improvisation-friendly productions for bigger MGM paydays in the mid ’30s, and “A Night at the Opera,” their first film for Metro, was the only one regarded as among their best.

Even in this send-up of pretension, class, opera and the very musicals that the brothers flirted with making, one can feel the “madcap” slipping away as the banter slows and structure and sticking-to-the-script/watch-the-clock MGM “efficiency” weigh on them from the start.

But this Sam Wood musical comedy still produced the most iconic Marx Brothers sight gag, “The Stateroom Scene.” It has an ambitious dance number (not involving the brothers), romantic ballads and the trappings of MGM prestige in many a scene.

It presents Chico’s and Harpo’s musical interludes in a logical (for the Marxes) context, and showcases them beautifully, with Chico’s piano pranks performed, up-close, with an audience of children and Harpo playing a cross-eyed tour de force on the harp.

“Opera” also starts the regrettable process of moving Groucho’s greatest foil, Margaret Dumont, into the background as the love interest — singing actors Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones — and their intrigues with a nastier, more famous singer (Walter Woolf King) and New York Opera director (Sig Ruman) are far more prominent.

But it plays, with veteran screenwriters George S. Kaufman and Morrie Riskind and a circus of uncredited gag writers assisting, leaning into the Brothers’ long-polished comic personas.

Groucho’s a hustler, seducer and sometimes talent rep named Otis P. Driftwood who assists the wealthy widow Claypool (Dumont) obtain entre to “society” through a generous donation to the opera. The peacocking opera director Gottlieb (Sig Ruman, hilarious) smells a live one in Mrs. Claypool, a social-striving donor with deep pockets.

“Listen, Gottlieb, nix on the love making. Because, I saw Mrs. Claypool first. Of course, her mother really saw her first; but, there’s no point in bringing The Civil War into this.”

The money is spent on landing a world famous star (King) right after his last performance of “Pagliacci” in Italy.

“You’re willing to pay him a thousand dollars a night just for singing? Why, you can get a phonograph record of ‘Minnie the Moocher’ for 75 cents. And for a buck and a quarter, you can get Minnie.”

The Great Lassparri’s co-star (Hart) is signed as well. But her great love (Jones) is an undiscovered talent in the chorus.

Only the intervention of old pal Tomasso (Chico) and new silent acquaintance Fiorello (Harpo) gets him on board ship…with them, in Driftwood’s luggage.

The voyage to New York has musical interludes, a grand production number with the poorer but freer spirits in steerage, and a lot of “negotiating” between agent Tomasso and con man Driftwood.

“Oh, it’s all right. That’s in every contract. That’s what they call a ‘sanity clause.'”

“You can’t fool me! There ain’t no ‘Santy Clause!”

The players do their own singing — including a couple of tunes by Nacio Herb Brown — and the actors do their own stunts( mostly) as many are packed into that undersized stateroom where Driftwood holds forth, finds three stowaways and then lets everybody who knocks at the door in until the fateful moment Dumont’s Mrs. Claypool arrives and pops the cork on the cabin.

I dare say fans even back in the ’30s noted the civilized tone of the mayhem, the polished, tidy scenes and sequences replacing the chaos that Paramount’s cameras sometimes were at a loss to capture.

But while the older, richer Marxes would forgo the slapstick and rely on writers to polish their one-liners for them, they’d still give us plenty to laugh at some ninety years later. The greasepaint eyebrows and mustache, the wigs, the silly hats, silly walks and snide remarks? Still hilarious.

And opera? Still funny enough to be a punchline all its own.

“And now, on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor!”

Rating: “approved”

Cast: Groucho March, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones, Walter Woolf King, Sig Ruman and Margaret Dumont

Credits: Directed by Sam Wood, scripted by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Riskind. An MGM release on Tubi, Amazon, et al

Running time: 1:35